THE FILM BIOGRAPHER, November 27, 2017

4 STARS

My book review of THE SILENT FILMS OF MARION DAVIES (Northwind Design &

Production, 2017), by Edward Lorusso…..

The films of actress Marion Davies have largely been ignored and overlooked over the years as

time fades the memory and new generations turn to other stars and role models. But in the lore

of the consciousness of those of who still recall and love “The Golden Age of Hollywood,” the

memory of Davies brings a smile and a warmth of heart to many of us.

She was never a GREAT film star the likes of Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, or Meryl Streep, as

her career ended, dare I say it, 80 years ago and the familiar memory alas is short. None of her

30 silent films (which author Edward Lorusso focuses on in this beautiful book) or her 16 talkies

were major classics like GONE WITH THE WIND, THE WIZARD OF OZ, CASABLANCA,

or STAR WARS. But they were box office hits of their day, meriting Davies her moment in

Hollywood history. Granted, except for her first film RUNAWAY ROMANY (1917), all the

rest of her films were directly financed by her lover and mentor publishing tycoon William

Randolph Hearst. And his clout in Hollywood was great.

Her pictures were heavily financed and overblown beginning with her second film venture

CECILIA OF THE PINK ROSES (1918) and most continued with an abundance of over-the-top

opulence which Hearst insisted upon. He was going to make his Marion the biggest star in the

galaxy, his multitude of newspapers continuously supplying praise and platitudes to each film

and Marion herself, who not surprisingly “…never looked better.” Unfortunately, Davies’ life

was heavily damaged upon the release of Orson Welles’ take on William Randolph Hearst,

CITIZEN KANE (RKO, 1941). However, Davies was NOT the troubled, untalented “Susan

Alexander” of Welles’ classic film.

There were truly some memorable silent Davies pictures of course, such as ENCHANTMENT

(1921), WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER (1922), LITTLE OLD NEW YORK

(1923), JANICE MEREDITH (1924) with W.C Fields, the joyous THE RED MILL (1927), and

most importantly 1928’s THE PATSY and SHOW PEOPLE, where Davies true gift of comedy

was most remarkably showcased. Hearst preferred his beloved paramour to appear in heavy

period dramas, and always…at least once in her pictures…in a scene wearing boy’s clothing. But

comedy, and a strong director, were Davies’ saving graces.

In THE SILENT FILMS OF MARION DAVIES, author Edward Lorusso lovingly has compiled

a wonderfully intelligent chronology of each of Marion Davies 30 silent motion pictures,

complete with production notes, story synopsis, cast and crew listings, minimal reviews, and

glorious stills and black & white and color advertising promotion from each film. Not a

comprehensive biography by any stretch, THE SILENT FILMS OF MARION DAVIES is a

thorough accounting of Davies’s silent film cannon. There is not a great deal of production

history, in depth shooting schedule, or contemporary Hollywood history given in the narrative.

But that is not the point of Lorusso’s work.

For any film historian or film buff, one must revisit the motion pictures to appreciate the past.

The gifted Edward Lorusso has given us a small treasure in his much appreciated THE SILENT

FILMS OF MARION DAVIES….

THE FILM BIOGRAPHER, November 27, 2017

4 STARS

My book review of HAIRPINS AND DEAD ENDS (BearManor Media, 2017), by Michael G.

Ankerich…..

I have always been a great fan of author Michael G. Ankerich’s work. His past biographical

compilations such as BROKEN SILENCE: CONVERSATIONS WITH 23 SILENT FILMS

STARS and DANGEROUS CURVES ‘ATOP HOLLYWOOD HEELS (a ‘companion” book if

you will of HAIRPINS AND DEAD ENDS), and such well-done biographies as THE REAL

JOYCE COMPTON and MAE MURRAY: THE GIRLWITH THE BEE-STUNG LIPS, have

been engrossing and fascinating history.

Ankerich has a passion for the Hollywood tragedienne. And his newest tome on the lives and

careers, the rise and fall, of these tragic beauties entitled HAIRPINS AND DEAD ENDS

continues his fascination. Subtitled “The Perilous Journeys of 25 Actresses Through Early

Hollywood,” his stories are somewhat familiar, usually tragic, and oftentimes intriguing. Many

of the actresses’ names which the author chronicles are familiar…Barbara La Marr, Alma

Rubens, and Lottie Pickford (the semi-talented sibling to Mary). Other actresses he essays here,

however, even I am hard pressed to recall…Evelyn Nelson, Marjorie Ray, and Lila Chester, for

instance.

Nonetheless, HAIRPINS AND DEAD ENDS is a fascinating read, and one relishes reading

something new. Author Michael G. Ankerich always writes in a clear and definite tone, his facts

and history interwoven conveniently throughout each chapter. These intriguing essays are in no

way meant to be definitive biographies of these tragic film sirens. And these chapters do not

include complete film chronologies of their subjects. But the author generously has given us rare

pictures and contemporary commentaries.

As an easy, breezy read, HAIRPINS AND DEAD ENDS by Michael G. Ankerich is yet another

terrific gem of a book by one of my favorite authors.

THE FILM BIOGRAPHER, September 28, 2017

4 STARS

My DVD review of JOHN BUNNY - FILM’S FIRST KING OF COMEDY (Mind Pilots Media,

2016), produced by Tony Susnick…..

With much eager anticipation I have awaited this documentary on the life and career of one of

early film’s greatest stars…the legendary comedian JOHN BUNNY. A former stage actor, his

brief film career only lasted five years, 1910-1915. Under contract with Vitagraph, Bunny also

made dramas, such as an early version of THE PICKWICK PAPERS, filmed in England. Yet

he starred in some 150 silent film shorts, including BUNNY ATTEMPTS SUICIDE, and his

best-known picture BACHELOR BUTTONS. His costar in many of these charming comedies,

such as POLISHING UP, and 1912’s A CURE FOR POKERITIS, was the thin, British actress

Flora Finch.

Bunny was a huge star when Hollywood was being born. He was known in nearly every cinema-

going household in this country prior to America’s entry into World War I. But John Bunny’s

untimely death, just weeks before the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, came the year after

Charlie Chaplin began his meteoric rise in popularity. It solidified him and not Bunny in the

minds of the growing cinema public. Sadly, in the annals of American film history, John Bunny

unfortunately has been largely overlooked. Until now.

JOHN BUNNY – FILM’S FIRST KING OF COMEDY DVD includes a succinct, albeit brief,

documentary on the life and career of the comedian as well as four extremely rare existent film

comedies exemplifying Bunny’s artistry obtained from 35-mm prints from the Library of

Congress. Also, lovingly presented in the documentary are comments from film historian and

author Sam Gill.

As a child some 50 years ago, I remember reading about John Bunny in books…Joe Franklin’s

CLASSICS OF THE SILENT SCREEN and Richard Griffith’s and Arthur Meyer’s THE

MOVIES. I always longed to learn more about this likeable rotund comedian. In my brief

introductions to early silent film, there were clips of him and Finch sparring in marital spats…

never in slapstick…and so I knew WHO he was. With the viewing of JOHN BUNNY – FILM’S

FIRST KING OF COMEDY, I am now aware of the actor, the man, his life and career. And

better yet, producer Tony Susnick has given us four of John Bunny’s films to enjoy and study.

Kudos must go to Mind Pilot Media, and especially to producer Tony Susnick for giving us

JOHN BUNNY – FILM’S FIRST KING OF COMEDY.

THE FILM BIOGRAPHER, September 28, 2017

4 STARS

My book review of POLA NEGRI – THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS (CreateSpace, 2017), by

Tony Villecco…..

There are a handful of books out there on the life and career of legendary silent film vamp Pola

Negri, ranging from the good (her own somewhat fictional autobiography MEMOIRS OF A

STAR), to the bad (no titles I will mention), to the indifferent (again, I will refrain). What we

have with Tony Villecco’s POLA NEGRI – THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS is just that without

apology….an evaluation of her Hollywood based films which the author has diligently

researched and produced in a volume which is most appealing, complete with rare photographs

and superb narrative.

Make no mistake, this is not a comprehensive nor complete biography of the film actress.

Disappointingly there is little about her early pre-Hollywood career, and virtually nothing about

her Nazi-era films and her life within the Third Reich, prior to her returning to America in 1941.

For many Negri fans, myself included, these two eras of the actress’s life and career are the most

interesting.

Pola Negri was brought to Hollywood in 1922 by Adolf Zukor and Jesse Lasky at Famous

Players-Paramount after her stunning success in European films. Many say she was brought

over to challenge the cinema supremacy of the difficult, temperamental Gloria Swanson, whom

she truly had a personal and professional rivalry with.

Born Apolonia Chalupec in 1897 or so, she entered films in her native Poland in1914. Moving

to Germany she changed her name and starred in several major internationally acclaimed films,

especially for Ernst Lubitsch such as THE EYES OF MUMMY MA and CARMEN (1918),

MADAME DUBARRY (1919), and SUMURAN (1920). Landing in Hollywood she made

nearly two dozen films, none of which turned the world on its ear, though such pictures as her

first BELLA DONNA (1923), THE SPANISH DANCER (1924), A WOMAN OF THE

WORLD (1925), HOTEL IMPERIAL (1927), and her best silent BARBED WIRE (1928)…all

of which are extent…prove she had a remarkable, intense talent.

Pola Negri however is best remembered in Hollywood lore as once the amour of Charlie

Chaplin, and the last love of Rudolph Valentino, whom she always claimed she was engaged to

when he met his untimely death in August 1926. At his funeral at Campbell’s Funerals Home in

New York city she collapsed and fainted for the cameras, and repeated the performance, perhaps

her best, at his burial later in Hollywood. The photographers, fans, and gossips had a field day.

Within a year she married the penniless Prince Serge Mdivani.

When sound came in, because of her accent, Negri was dead in Hollywood. After a couple of

really bad film talkies, which author Villecco details in his book. Negri returned to Germany,

where her second film there, MAZURKA (1935), was a brilliant success. She starred seven

European pictures, between 1934 and 1938, during this turbulent period in European history.

Her alleged affair with Adolf Hitler notwithstanding, some of her greatest celluloid performances

were these very seven pictures, which are still extent and rarely screened. Sadly, they are not

covered in Villecco’s otherwise comprehensive narrative, as are Negri’s Hollywood films.

After a couple of failed film comebacks (1941’s comedy for RKO, HI DIDDLE DIDDLE with

Adolphe Menjou, in which she was surprisingly good), and Disney’s 1964 caper THE

MOONSPINNERS with Hayley Mills, Negri’s last years were spent in retirement in Texas,

where she lived with a “benefactress” until her death in 1987.

Nonetheless, POLA NEGRI – THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS is what it is, and that is a very fine

accounting of Negri’s Hollywood career. Author Tony Villecco should be applauded for

properly chronicling her work during Hollywood’s Golden Silent Era.

THE FILM BIOGRAPHER, September 28, 2017

5 STARS

My DVD review of THE CHAMPION - A STORY OF AMERICA’S FIRST FILM TOWN

(Milestone Cinematheque, 2017), produced by The Fort Lee Film Commission…..

I am so excited about the release of THE CHAMPION – A STORY OF AMERICA’S FIRST

FILM TOWN, produced by the Fort Lee (New Jersey) Film Commission for many reasons. First

historically.

In the early silent days of films, motion pictures were filmed on the East Coast, primarily in New

York. Due to patent wars raging because of the Thomas Edison trust in New York state,

filmmakers moved across the Hudson River to New Jersey, and primarily to the sleepy, little

town of Fort Lee on the Palisades cliffs with its quaint little streets and rugged terrain which

could double for the “Wild West.”

Such stage stars as Mary Pickford, Alice Brady, Douglas Fairbanks, Lionel Barrymore, Norma

and Constance Talmadge, Will Rogers, to name but a few, began their film careers here. Pearl

White starred in “cliffhangers,” shot right on the cliffs of the Palisades, and Theda Bara began

her “vamping” there. By 1915 Fort Lee was American cinema capital. And what better way to

film talent from the New York stage than to ferry them over to Fort Lee and film them in their

classic plays at such burgeoning film studios as World (home of director Maurice Tourneur),

Selig (home of director Alice Guy Blache), Peerless, Universal, and Goldwyn film studios.

The first Fort Lee film studio was the Champion, founded in Englewood Cliffs the summer of

1910 by Mark Dintenfass, in direct opposition to Edison’s legal subpoenas. In 1912, along with

other small companies filming in Fort Lee and Coytesville, Champion joined together to create

the Universal conglomerate. Fort Lee was the home of some of the most memorable early silent

films in history…THE NEW YORK HAT (1912) with Lionel Barrymore and Mary Pickford,

Maurice Maeterlinck’s THE BLUE BIRD (1918), directed by Maurice Tourneur, and D.W.

Griffith’s MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (1912), filmed on the streets of Fort Lee with Lillian

Gish. By 1919 however the show was over in Fort Lee. The real estate had been maximized,

and producers were finding California more desirable for filming year-round.

Yet in THE CHAMPION – A STORY OF AMERICA’S FIRST FILM TOWN, history is put in

context not only with the story of the Champion Studio, and Fort Lee and its evolution as a film

center, but also with its significance because of social and cultural development. Many motion

pictures produced in Fort Lee up until about 1920 are lost today. But what gems remain are

historically important for what they represent, most importantly the early careers of legendary

actors, actresses, directors and craftsmen, as well as our collective social history.

Personally, the second reason I praise the DVD release of THE CHAMPION – A STORY OF

AMERICA’S FIRST FILM TOWN, is because when I was a kid I had read about Fort Lee in the

1960s. I had no idea I would eventually move Fort Lee in 1982, then move to Englewood Cliffs

in 1994 until 2007. I remember as a young actor and film historian, roaming the streets of Fort

Lee, Englewood Cliffs, and Coytesville, where many of the foundations of the legendary film

studios still remained. I photographed them, and the old Champion Studio, then a printing

company. I discovered the Fort Lee Public Library and its treasure of early cinema materials,

where I saw a screening of THE WISHING RING (1914), filmed right in my own backyard. I

treasured Rita Ecke Altomara’s HOLLYWOOD ON THE PALISADES to learn all I could about

Fort Lee’s rich cinema history. I daydreamed about what it must have been like to this small

quint little community to have the crazy “flickers” come to town.

Thanks to Richard Koszarki’s magnificent research and study, and his book FORT LEE, THE

FILM TOWN, we now have written history of America’s cinema beginnings. Thanks to

Milestone’s remarkable THE CHAMPION – A STORY OF AMERICA’S FIRST FILM TOWN

we have a visual documentation of film history. Included in this 2-DVD collection are nine

restored Fort Lee lensed films. A film historian’s rich desert…..

MICHAEL CURTIZ – A Life in Film by Alan K. Rode

Review:

August 29, 2017

With great anticipation I read this, the first, long-awaited biography of legendary Hollywood

film craftsman Michael Curtiz, the director of such classic Warner Brothers’ motion pictures as

NOAH’S ARK (1928), 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING (1933), CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935,

write-in Oscar nominated Best Director), ANTHONY ADVERSE (1936), THE ADVENTURES

OF ROBIN HOOD (1936), FOUR DAUGHTERS (1938), ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES

(1938, again Oscar nominated for Best Director), and THE SEA WOLF (1941). The Hungarian-

born Curtiz, who had established himself in Europe long before coming to America in 1926,

reached the zenith of his craft during the “Golden Age of Hollywood” with his direction of

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942, nominated again Best Director) and CASABLANCA

(1943, winning the Best Director Oscar). He was nominated yet again in 1945 for helming

MILDRED PIERCE. (He also won an Oscar in 1939 for the two-reel film short SONS OF

LIBERTY).

Michael Curtiz is recognized for creating stars out of such familiar names as Bette Davis, Doris

Day, and John Garfield. He directed every kind of genre of film at Warner Brothers…musicals,

crime dramas, social commentaries, historical epics, film noir, comedies, and it was he who

popularized the swashbuckler, creating a huge star out of Errol Flynn. His many pictures won 10

Oscar nominations for their stars. He was a firm taskmaster; he lived and breathed motion

pictures directing during the 1930s sometimes up to six films a year. The quality of his work is

irrefutable. Yet because he died before the era of nostalgia, he is largely forgotten.

Yet he was a film pioneer in many ways. Curtiz’ is remembered for his use of camera angles,

high crane shots, fluid movement of the camera, at the same time highlighting the human

condition and problems of everyman with his complex use of style and composition in his

framework. His love of expression in his films, the early and later day use of Technicolor, and

the incorporation of widescreen were technical developments Curtiz relished. (His 1954

Paramount film WHITE CHRISTMAS with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney was the first

picture shot in Vista-Vision, and his 1954’s THE EGYPTIAN for 20th-Fox, used Cinemascope.)

For PATRICIA NEAL – AN UNQUIET LIFE (University Press of Kentucky, 2006), I

interviewed the actress regarding Michael Curtiz and his direction of her in two Warner Brothers

films BRIGHT LEAF, with Gary Cooper, and THE BREAKING POINT, with John Garfield,

both 1950. Her comments towards Curtiz were harsh, as if they were still fresh in her mind, “He

showed little compassion towards his stars; his direction was sharp and to the point.” To Neal he

was unkind and difficult. Yet the results of his direction can be witnessed in those two films, or

any of Curtiz’ pictures for that matter when viewed today. They are immensely satisfying and

remarkable. (THE BREAKING POINT, as I wrote in my book, is indeed Curtiz’ “hidden

masterpiece,”…a minor classic and must see piece of cinema.)

Alan K. Rode’s intensely personal and deeply ingratiating biography MICHAEL CURTIZ – A

LIFE IN FILM, provides the reader a complete, well-researched, comprehensive biography and

critical career study of a brilliant yet complicated artist. Though in Hollywood he was

notoriously known for his misuse of the English language, his malapropisms became common

fodder for the gossips. Yet Curtiz dramatic personal life, especially his third marriage to

screenwriter Bess Meredyth, was not simple. And his success led to much unhappiness.

Rode’s work is thorough and complete. His dedication to his subject is sure. Along with his

immense research into the Warner Brothers files, the author not only fleshes out the work of this

gifted director, but equally the telling of Curtiz’ personal saga brings the director’s life and

persona into full view. A wonderful read, and an accurate source for future reference,

MICHAEL CURTIZ – A LIFE IN FILM by Alan K. Rode is thoroughly satisfying, highly

intelligent, and a delicious, rich desert for any serious lover of film and film history…indulge...

Stephen Michael Shearer, author

PATRICIA NEAL – AN UNQUIET LIFE (University Press of Kentucky, 2006)

BEAUTIFUL – THE LIFE OF HEDY LAMARR (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press-Macmillan,

2010)

GLORIA SWANSON – THE ULTIMATE STAR (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press-

Macmillan, 2013)